The Sardonyx Net Part 11

Zed said, "Will you at least think about it, Rhani?"

She sighed. "I'll think about it, Zed-ka."

With the discipline that years of practice had taught her, she put Tsurada from her mind. In her bedroom she took out the letter from the Gemit spy. Using pen and paper, she drafted what she wanted to tell him, which was, to listen, report, and when he could discreetly, to foment trouble. Life was going ill with Family Yago; why should it go well with Family Dur? Binkie was at the computer, using the display screen. He was very pale, and she wondered if Zed had been at him for some imagined or trivial wrong. "Binkie," she said. He turned around to face her. "What's the matter?"

His hands were shaking. "Rhani-ka, I -- I seem to have made an error.

Days ago you instructed me to take steps to find the source of the threats. I drafted a letter to the police, with details. I thought I'd sent it -- but it's still here, on display mode, which means I never sent it at all. If I had, the attack, the bomb -- none of that might have happened!" His tone lifted shrilly.

"Stop that," Rhani said, sharply. "You didn't drop the bomb. You simply made a mistake."

"But -- "

"No, that's enough. What's done is done." Coldly, she watched him as he fought himself under control.

"You -- you won't -- " He gulped for air.

"Tell my brother? No, why should I?" she said. Weak with relief, he sagged against the bedroom wall.

She picked up the Gemit report, heartsick. d.a.m.n Zed! She had never told him, but she had guessed the night before it happened that Binkie was going to run.

I should never have let Zed do what he did, she thought, and then sighed, knowing that the compulsion driving her brother was too strong for him to break and that under certain circ.u.mstances she, even she, could not control him. Again she glanced at Binkie. Fear was effective, but it destroyed all trust. She needed her slaves to trust her. She would use dorazine if she wanted to be served by a houseful of automatons.

_"WE CAN DO IT, TOO"_.

The mail bubble, arriving as scheduled the next morning, brought amid the mail a dirty envelope with a piece of paper sealed inside it. It was signed, "The Free Folk of Chabad."

Rhani, reading the ugly scrawl, grew angrier and angrier, until she could no longer sit in her chair. She thrust the sc.r.a.p at Binkie. "Here. Give it to the police when they are done." She went onto the terrace. Below her, the police hunted through the bushes for evidence. She made herself lean, relax. The dawn plants, she noticed, were wilting into the brick. Amri had neglected them to sit with Dana.

One of the police officers was coming toward the house. She went inside.

"Give me that thing," she said to Binkie. Holding it at a corner, she took it downstairs. The policeman had just entered the house.

"Domna," he said, "We're done. Sorry to have troubled you."

"Did you find anything?" she asked.

He shook his head. "Not a thing."

"Here." She gave him the letter. "It came in this morning's mail. You'd better give it to Officer Tsurada."

"Yes, ma'am." He produced a plastic bag from somewhere and thrust the letter inside. "Thank you." He nodded to Immeld, who was smiling at him from a kitchen stool. "Thank you for the lemonade." As he stepped across the threshold, he turned back. "Domna, I just want to say -- you sure have a lovely house."

Rhani smiled. "Thank you, Officer." She followed him outside, wondering idly where her brother was.

She found him by the crater, bare-chested, leaning on a shovel and talking to Timithos. As she walked toward them, she found herself admiring his smooth skin and the play of the muscles in his shoulders. "What are you doing, Zed-ka?" she said.

He grinned. "Working off anger," he said. Bending, he shoveled a load of earth back into the crater. "It doesn't help to be angry."

"Yes," Rhani said, "I noticed. I got a letter this morning from the Free Folk of Chabad. It said: "We can do it, too."

Sweat ran down Zed's sides. "What did you do with it?"

"Gave it to the police, told them to give it to Officer Tsurada." Zed scowled. "Nice of them to sign their handiwork. They might just as well have taken an ad-spot in PIN."

Rhani scratched her chin. "You think they mean it," she said.

"Of course they mean it! Look at it!" He pointed with his chin at the scorched and broken earth.

"Why didn't they do it, then?" Rhani said.

"What?"

"They blew up a piece of the lawn, when they could easily have dropped that bomb right on my head." Rhani stretched her arms out. "They don't want to kill me, Zed-ka. They want something else."

Zed's face was thoughtful. "Hmm. What do you think it is?"

"To frighten me, perhaps?" Rhani picked up a clod of dirt. She squeezed it tightly, feeling the rich soil compress. It smelled good. "I don't know."

Letting it fall, she dusted her palms.

"Romantics," said Zed. "Fools." He chopped shortly at the earth with his shovel. "Rhani-ka, you should get a spade and join me, it's good exercise."

"I hate exercise."

"I know. You used to promise to go ice climbing with me sometime. Have you noticed that I no longer ask?"

"I meant to," she said sadly, knowing that it was too late, she would never go ice climbing with her brother on the slopes of the Abanat icebergs. She hunched her shoulders.

Zed's motion stopped. "That d.a.m.n fool!" Rhani looked swiftly up. One arm around Amri, Dana Ikoro was maneuvering his way through the kitchen door. Zed swore, and let the shovel fall. "I'll be right back." He strode toward the house. Rhani opened her mouth to call him, and then shut it.

Dana's weight was too much for Amri to support. As Zed reached his side, he groped for the wall and, knees wobbling, began to fall. Zed caught him under the armpits. 'What do you think you're doing?" he said.

Dana folded to the ground. He squinted at Zed's face. "Walking."

"Who told you walking would be good for you? You're concussed, do you know that? How many fingers am I holding up?" Zed did not try to keep the irritation from his voice. Dana concentrated on the splayed fingers.

"Three."

"Humph." He had not expected the answer to be right. "Let me look at your head." Dana bent his neck. Zed probed gently around the purple lump. Dana winced. "How does it feel?"

"It feels as big as my fist."

"It isn't. Do you have a headache?"

"No."

"Good. Look straight ahead. Follow my finger. Don't turn your head.

Follow my finger as it moves. Right." Dana's eyes turned as Zed moved one finger up, down, in a circle, and sideways. Zed cupped a hand under Dana's chin. The grip, precursor of pain, made Dana's muscles tighten. Softly, Zed said, "Did I tell you to get out of bed?"

Dana mumbled, "No, Zed-ka."

"Say it clearly." Dana repeated it. "Don't get up again until I say that you can. My sister wants you healthy. You understand?"

"Yes, Zed-ka."

Satisfied, Zed rose. By the crater, Rhani was watching him. Dana spoke from the ground. "Zed-ka?"

"Yes?"

"Thank you for my music."

Zed half-smiled, thinking of the challenge Dana had presented to him, and the pleasure his subjugation had been. "Thank Rhani," he said. "She asked me to get them."

The following morning, Rhani and Zed ate breakfast on the terrace. Below them on the lawn, Timithos was planting vines in the crater, which was now a flower bed. Behind them in the bedroom, Amri was whipping bedsheets about. Cara had had to order her to leave Dana's room to get her work done. She had argued. Rhani tried to picture sunny little Amri arguing, and couldn't. She lifted the bowl and drank her egg broth. "Zed-ka, how is Dana this morning?"

"Getting better," said Zed. "He wants to get up."

"Should he?"

"Not if he gets dizzy when he stands." Zed smiled. "Don't look so gloomy, Rhani-ka; he'll be all right."

"I was thinking about Amri."

"What's the matter with Amri?"

He hadn't noticed. Rhani decided that for an astute man, Zed could sometimes be oddly blind. "She's head over heels in love with Dana."

"Amri?" Zed raised his eyebrows. "I shouldn't think she'd ever had a s.e.xual thought in her short life."

"Not body love. The kind of feeling we used to call spun-cotton love."

Zed said, "I wonder what Dana thinks of it."

"Dana says she reminds him of one of his younger brothers."

Zed said, "He's more concussed than I thought, if Amri looks to him like anybody's brother."

"I think," said Rhani, "that he meant his feelings for her are purely affectional."

"How touching," said Zed sardonically. He said, to the wall, "Last night, and the night before, I lay awake wondering what it would be like if you had died. I decided it would make life insupportable. But then, my feelings for you have never been purely affectional."

"Zed-ka." She reached for him, across the table. He turned his head. His mouth was a line. Love and desolation mingled in his eyes. "I have no intention of dying, not for fifty or sixty years. I plan a long life. Last night I, too, lay awake. I was thinking about taking a bodyguard."

"What do you think?"

"I think you and Officer Tsurada are right."

Zed smiled. The set look left his face.

"But you know how I feel about privacy. I hate to add a stranger to the household." She picked up a piece of fruit and used her teeth to sc.r.a.pe the pulp from the rind. "This morning it occurred to me: I don't have to. I already have a bodyguard."

Zed looked troubled. "I can guard you when I'm with you, Rhani-ka, but -- ".

"I didn't mean you." She laid the rind on her plate. "I meant Dana. He saved my life once, and he's going to need something to keep him busy while we're in Abanat. He's obedient, and quick on his feet, and not a fool."

Zed's forehead wrinkled. "You sound as if you've made up your mind."

"Don't you think it's a good idea?" Rhani asked.

He frowned thoughtfully. "I agree with you, Dana's not a fool, and he's had formal training in several fighting arts. He's got good reflexes; he can fight." Zed grinned. "If he's not fighting Skellians."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

Zed flapped a hand. "Nothing, Rhani-ka. Have you spoken to Dana about this yet?"

"Not yet."

"Let me do it."

"As you wish," Rhani said. In the garden, Timithos was standing beneath a sprinkler's rain, tr.i.m.m.i.n.g a vine. He looked utterly content. "This means, of course, that I shall have to take Amri with me."

"Why?" said Zed. Rhani looked at him, exasperated. "Zed-ka, you don't listen. She's in love! And even if it's only spun-cotton love, she'll be miserable if she's left here while Dana's in Abanat."

Zed shook his head, smiling. "I keep telling you, Rhani; you shouldn't coddle slaves."

Rhani returned the smile. "I know, Zed-ka. But though in Amri's eyes I'm probably old and gray and doddering, I don't want her thinking that I don't know how it feels to be in love."

*Chapter Six*

The Abanat Sea, blue-green and flat as a plate, lay sparkling and glittering in the early morning sun. In the water the great peaks of the icebergs sat; Dana glimpsed them for an instant before the trajectory of the bubblecraft cut them from his sight.

"There," said Zed, "there's the landingport." Dana squinted down. He saw wide stone walkways, the green of trees, the silver ribbons of the movalong system, houses with black solar panels on their roofs. He was glad to see the city. Zed's precise directions and the bubble's display maps had brought him across the Chabadese waste over endless, featureless hills. Glaring light reduced visibility; landmarks were few, and subtle, and they shifted with shadow. He could see why it was dangerous to fly over Chabad at noon. You would end up flying in circles over the same humped hillocks unable to see past them, trapped like a fly in a bottle.

The landing field was clear below him; there was no other traffic. He touched the controls, slowing them to descent speed, and put the bubble into its spiral. This small field, Zed had explained, was maintained by the city for the private use of the Four Families. Before the dust from their descent had settled, the landingport manager was on the field bowing, smiling, and shouting orders to the porters. Rhani spoke with the manager. She looked crisp and cool in blue pants and a blue shirt. Zed leaned against a pylon, bored. The little port smelled of grease and hot metal. At one end of it stood a tall shuttle transport, an IS-cla.s.s ship of the type that ferried pa.s.sengers from the moon.

Dana wondered what it was doing here -- and then he realized that he knew it, had ridden in it: it was Zed's shuttle from the Net. Squinting, he could just make out on its side the design of the Yago "Y." He stared at it, aching for the feel of weightless flight and a starship, even a fusion-drive ship, lifting under his palms.

"Dana!"

Zed's voice sliced through Dana's longing cleanly as a knife. Hurriedly, he joined Rhani as she strode to the gate of the port. The gate had no Cage- field, not even a retinal scanner, but a metal bar and a smiling man sitting in a booth pushing a b.u.t.ton to lift it. Dana wondered why he looked so happy at his task. The bar lifted. They were outside.